It's the kiss the whole country has been talking about!
The thirds season of The White Lotus has been a whirlwind of Lorazepam, white women on vacation, monologues about identity, and of course, brotherly relations. Viewers are especially obsessed with a storyline where the two Ratliff brothers, college-age Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) and 18-year-old Lochlan (Sam Nivola) have had a strange energy that eventually led to them kissing, and having a threesome with a woman also staying at the resort.
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In a new wide-ranging interview for The Hollywood Reporter, the Emmy Award-winning showrunner Mike White, and the actors who play the brothers, have gone behind-the-scenes to tell us more about where the storyline came from and what it was like filming it.
"I don’t want to write identity coming-of-age stories. I’m not interested in someone coming out. I like something that feels kind of naughty, which is the opposite of that," White told THRabout his motivation for including the incest storyline. "I also want to make the wider audience complicit in those stories so that they're suddenly going down this wormhole with me. There's some kind of pleasure in getting a bigger audience on board with these erotic moments."
He continued: "And the incest thing, it's really more about someone who is trying to connect with his brother and his sister through the things they value. Saxon is all about getting off, and Piper is renouncing the materialistic."
Nivola, who plays Lochlan, the younger brother, revealed it was his first time kissing on camera, and said that while it was shocking, "it makes sense for the story and it makes sense practically, and sort of metaphorically in a sad way for my character."
Charlotte Le Bon, who plays the French Canadian party girl who instigates the brothers' kiss was previously quoted as saying she thought her co-star Schwarzenegger "was going to throw up" while filming the kiss between the brothers, and now, Schwarzenegger has clarified that his reaction was while he was still in character.
"The thing is, that reaction? It’s Saxon," he said. "When I'm in character, I believe that's what he would've done. Right then, and then again the next morning, it's like, 'Is he going to throw up?' And he does. I hope it wasn't taken out of context, that I would throw up because of Sam or whatever."
"I think it went as smoothly as that kind of thing can possibly go. I mean, I don't have anything to compare it to, but really the only thing I felt uncomfortable about was the fact that we’re on a fucking yacht and I get seasick," Nuvola added.
HBO's The White Lotus season 3 finale drops this Sunday, April 6 on Max.
